All Fall Down: Eerie Quiet in Detroit (Part III)

Marketing experts used to say that train people didn't understand they were in the transportation business, not train business. Today auto execs don't understand they are in the transportation business, not car business.  One Barnum Bailey Ringling Bros.  auto company (Toyota?) might remain in 20 years, but the rest are going bye-bye.  Here's the final installment by Kimberly Taylor of her visit to Detroit a few weeks ago.

"There’s a quiet that is the sound of hospitals. It is also the sound of the big three. There’s the typical Midwest kindness but it is tinged by an inescapable pall mixed with gallows humor that down to the last one they all have. “Just about everyone here has packed personal belongings and brought them home,” we were told by a friend. She said the exit drill is so common that the thirty minutes to pack your possessions and be escorted out the door isn’t enough time emotionally or physically. “I’ve been in the automotive industry my whole life. I love what I do. I don’t know what to do. The morale has never been lower,” were comments we heard from all of them. One important advocate, a lion, has been offered a package. If you say no you may be offered another and likely the deal will not be so sweet or you may have your position just eliminated. 55 years old and 30 years in the industry is the not so lucky target age. Too old to work forever. Too young to ever retire in an economy like this. The cuts are never ending and they long ago got rid of all of the fat. They talk about their neighbors, foreclosures, the empty desks of friends whose targets on their backs caught management attention. And still, rising above all of that, the pride and loyalty and gratefulness they all feel to have been lucky enough to have a role in this great capitalist undertaking rivals the confusion and sense of loss."  Part 3 of 3

Comments

[Suzanne]

I grew up near Detroit - and my family still lives there (although I'm 2 hours north now). The thing is, this is not anything new. I am 37 years old and have no memory of the Detroit glory days. Downtown has always been empty and sad in my lifetime. When I graduated from high school in 1989, there were no factory jobs for high school grads to go to. When I graduated with my B.A. from MSU in 1993 - there were no white collar jobs in the automotive industry for us to go to. The automotive industry has been in the toilet for decades.

Therefore, for the 50+ year old factory worker, although I feel bad for him, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Skilled labor in Michigan are not having nearly the problems as the unskilled workers. I have a good friend who is a pipefitter who makes more money than my college-educated husband. Wind companies are in desparate need for technicians who can put up wind mills.

The fact of the matter is that we live in an global economy. And in a global economy, companies will go to where the labor is cheapest - and that's not in Detroit.

I understand that not every one is going to go to school to become a rocket scientist. But frankly, if you don't have a skill you won't have a job - period. I'm a Gen Xer who has friends with education ranging from a high school diploma with training (i.e. in the trades, or hair styling, or massage) to those those who are attorneys and doctors. The common denominator is that none of us ever thought we'd get work without a skill.

I'm curious if there is a generation gap going on here in the automotive industry. As "sassy" as we Gen Xers are - and as "out of the box" as the Gen Ys are, I find it hard for either of these cohorts to get P.O.ed that we can't get an unskilled job paying $75K.

One of the most frustrating things about living in Michigan is that so many people don't want to let go of the manufacturing mindset. We have the best engineers in the world in Michigan, but we don't focus on them - we focus on our aging unskilled workforce.

So after this extremely long post (sorry about that - a little passionate about this), I agree with everything Bill says on this topic. I just wish the circuses would just merge or implode or whatever so we can get on with it already. Wind energy, research, engineering, education, medicine - that's what Michigan needs to be focusing on.